TV review: The
Doctor Who team screened the first two episodes of
the new series, The Impossible Astronaut and Day Of The Moon, for the press last night. We were there – and here’s our (spoiler-free) review.

Opening episodes of new Doctor Who series are supposed to do a couple of not-very-complex things: quickly get you up-to-speed with who and where the characters are, provide some kind of uncomplicated Earth-threatening danger, chuck in a couple of chase scenes and a few good jokes and then wrap it all up well inside an hour so we can get on with the rest of the series.

Naturally, Steven Moffat – the scriptwriting wizard now hitting his second series in charge of Who, who also managed to knock off Sherlock in his spare time – has decided to do the complete opposite of this.

It’s about five minutes into the first episode, The Impossible Astronaut, when the first jaw-dropping thing happens – and before the second episode, Day Of The Moon, is over, we’ve had at least two more series-changing revelations and a dizzyingly twisty, tightly-packed story that contains so many future plot threads, red herrings, teases and unsolved puzzles that there’s a chance its broadcast will actually make the internet catch fire.

Honestly, you didn’t think this would beeasy, did you? Of course it isn’t. Because Steven Moffat hates your brain and wants to hurt it.

Make no mistake, this isn’t easy, switch-your-faculties-off entertainment – it’s big, dark, impressively ambitious, dazzlingly executed entertainment that demands and repays your full attention. (It also makes very few concessions to those who didn’t see the last series, and absolutely none to the fact that it’s supposed to be a kids’ show – a few children at the screening did seem a little left behind by some of the script’s wilder curve-balls, although it didn’t dampen their enthusiasm in the slightest.)

And if you thought last season’s finale was stuffed full of mind-bending wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey shenanigans… just wait. This makes Inception seem about as straightforward as The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

The show’s creators are playing a long game here – it’s clear that this season, more than any other of the New Who, is about a tightly woven set of of continuous plot arcs that will drive the whole series forward. These first two episodes are all about the questions, not the answers.

And that’s what may be the most enjoyable thing about Moffat’s stewardship of the TARDIS – that he’s returned the mystery to Doctor Who. The 45 minute, mostly single-episode format of the new series often meant that there was little room for more than a few minutes of ambiguity and uncertainty before the battle lines were clearly drawn. Moffat’s unafraid to let the viewer be genuinely baffled, and leave them like that forweeks, the bastard – and it’s all the better for it.

Of course, this being Moffat, the episodes also deliver on the laughs, scares, emotions and whip-smart dialogue front. There’s some great jokes, and winning performances from Matt Smith, Karen Gillan, Arthur Darville and Alex Kingston that match the script’s ability to turn on a dime from comedy to tragedy and back. There are several moments that are quietly heartbreaking, and which hit you from completely unexpected directions. And Kingston’s River Song gets not one but two action scenes so effortlessly cool that they prompted spontaneous applause at the screening.

The American locations and 1969 setting – just as humanity prepares to set foot on the moon – are stunningly shot (there’s an image of the Saturn V rocket preparing for launch that many feature films would be jealous of).

And it’s quite astoundingly creepy at times – the Edvard Munch-inspired villains, The Silents, could give the Weeping Angels a run for their money. Moffat’s fondness for disembodied children’s voices with unaccountable control over technology gets a thorough run-out, and it features the most sinister orphanage since… well, probably the film The Orphanage, we’d guess.

But this is all about setting the gears in motion for what has the potential to be an astonishing series. There’s some massive plotlines being set up here, and some big, bold themes too – trust, fate, love and death, all the old favourites. As always, there’s the question of whether Moffat and his team will manage to keep juggling all the balls they’re chucking in the air… but given his track record recently, would you bet against him?